Old Man River Expedition Slideshow

Brett Rogers scanning a river chartthe same used by all Mississippi boat captains to know what lies ahead.

Lake Winnibigoshishknown as Lake Winnie for shortis a 67,000-acre lake thats bisected by the Mississippi. Cliff Quinn casts a line off the bag, gunning for some of the lakes famous walleye.

Pulled up in Winona, Minnesota, where a floating town has cropped up along the banks of the river. Besides waterfront views, these floating cottages avoid paying property tax, too.

The team on Day Four, absolutely bushed from a hard day of paddling through the headwaters in northern Minnesota.

The first round of damage from the boulder-filled shallow waters of northern Minnesota. The bottom of the teams York boat would take a beating throughout the expedition.

The very last of what felt like too many portages, headed into the Twin Cities.

Sarah Stewart catches some Zs outside of the Twin Cities. Rogers says some 95 of the expeditions 110 nights were spent camping on beachesor in some cases, poison ivy patches.

South of the Twin Cities, somewhere in Minnesota, the day before high winds snapped the York boats mast.

Rowing out of the firstand largestset of locks the team would encounter as they headed south. This massive lock dropped a full 50 feet, making it the biggest on the river.

An early petro-chemical refinery sightingthis one in Muscatine, Iowa.

The arches of St. Louisthe gateway to the West and about halfway down the Mississippi for Brett Rogers and company.

Putting in after the last portage near the Twin Cities. The last time the team would take the boat out for the rest of the voyage.

In order to keep channels deep enough, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constantly dredges the river, creating mini man-made mountains of sand.

One of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers many dredging pumps that keeps the river clear for commercial traffic.

One of the innumerable folks Brett and his team met along the trip was a float plane pilot, who happily offered photographer Kyle Jeffries a lift to capture some panoramic shots of the meandering Mississippi in all her glory.

White pelicans near the Bonnet Carr Spillway. Once a threatened species, the proliferation of catfish farms have created a ready food source for the birds, and the team saw white pelicans along the entire length of the expedition.

Big barges make big wakeone of the many obstacles faced by the crew as they headed south.

While the team has hoped to sail for as much as 25 percent of their trip, a snappedand subsequently shortened mastkept that figure down below one percent. Captain Rogers puts a positive spin on it, Sailing is boring when youve got five people just sitting in a boat, anyway. It was pretty cold on the river, too, so at least rowing kept us warm.

Approaching Louisiana in the middle of the Mississippi Delta. From left to right: Cliff Quinn, Sarah Stewart and Brett Rogers.

Quiet water on Profit Island on the ninety-ninth night of the trip, right before reaching Baton Rouge.

Thirty miles outside of New Orleans the riverbanks are dotted with giant petro-chemical refineries.

Massive ocean-going ships slide past New Orleans at the Bonnet Carr Spillway, where the team is camped between a nuclear power facility and a coal-fired power plant.